Customer Reviews

My Swordhand Is Singing

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Marcus Sedgwick's MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING is a dark novel with a heavy emphasis on thick, snowy forests of Eastern Europe, gypsies, and superstitious town folk. It is the perfect setting for a scary story, but it is also much, much more.

Tomas and his teenage son, Peter, are a pair of traveling woodcutters with a mysterious past that settle down in the village of Chust one winter. Before long a string a deaths strike the village. Peter is perturbed by the villagers' strange reactions to the occurrences. When he asks Tomas about them, his father brushes away his questions as silly folk lore. However, Tomas is also doing his own share of strange things, like digging a trench around their home and filling it with moving water. When Agnes, a girl Peter likes, is symbolically married to a dead man and shut up in a remote hut, Peter tries to rescue her and runs into a monster.

Sedgwick takes pains to distance his tale from the gentleman bloodsucker that Anne Rice and authors like her have embedded into pop culture. The word "vampire" is never mentioned and the vampires, themselves, have varying appearances throughout the novel. He does a great job at weaving various and sometimes seemingly paradoxical pieces of folk lore. This gives the story a great sense of immediacy and realism. Sedgwick also shifts the focus from vampires to people who have to deal with terrifying occurrences at home. The buildup of the growing atmosphere of fear and denial will have readers biting their fingernails.

Marcus Sedgwick seems to take a lot of risks in writing this atypical, historically rich vampire novel. Central to the story line is not the relationship between a human and vampire or a girl and a boy (a la Buffy and Angel), but a wounded relationship between father and son. While this may seem terribly uncool, the realism of this relationship is what grounds the novel and makes the more fantastical elements more believable and scary.

Reviewed by: Natalie Tsang

First off, the title is intriguing, isn't it? It grabbed my attention right away. Of all the books on the library shelf, my eye fell to this one because of its original title. I usually don't read horror often anymore, but it seemed worth the chance and I was not disappointed. I finished it in one long afternoon on the front porch, and can recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of a scare. The story flows well, the characters are easy to get to know and to like (or dislike!) and you get to care about what happens, thus, you cannot put the book down until it's done. The author was able to paint a picture of this remote village and of the people living there, and I could really visualize this place and it's inhabitants quite easily. Take a chance and get scared!

My Swordhand is Singing is a well crafted and quick read that will chill you to the bone. Sedgwick tells the story providing history and background for the characters in his own time resulting in a style that is not condescending to the reader. The plot moves quickly without dwelling on any one event or emotion for too long leading to an experience that pulls the reader in and pushes them along to the frightening and exciting climax of the story.

Well worth the read.

i was quite surprized at the fierceness of tension and action the author put to page. it's a vampire story where the word "vampire" is never said. and these are not your "twilight" type vampires--attractive, brooding, and romantic. actually, they behave more like ghouls than vamps, but a good story it was nonetheless. the prose was incredibly literate: "there was nothing for Tomas now . . .just the sword, which flew so fast that the air itself was cut in two." there is also a moral to the story--that you reap only heartbreak and despair when you deny your destiny.

From the back cover:
In the bitter cold of an unrelenting winter Tomas and his son, Peter, arrive in Chust and settle there as woodcutters. Tomas digs a channel of fast flowing waters around their hut, so they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn't understand why his father has done this nor why his father carries a long, battered box, whose mysterious contents he is forbidden to know. But Tomas is a man with a past: a past that is tracking him with deadly intent. As surely as the snow falls softly in the forest of one hundred thousand silver birch trees, father and son must face a soulless enemy and a terrifying destiny. Set in the remote and forbidding landscapes of the seventeenth century, this is a heart rending story of loss and redemption, and inspired by the original vampire folklore of Easter Europe it represents a unique regeneration of a timeless myth.

Review:
This is the first book by Marcus Sedgwick that I've read and it was brilliant. As a kid I grew up reading the Grimm Brothers' Tales, and not the Disney versions either, the real, true, scary, gory ones and My Swordhand is Singing is a hark back to those kinds of stories.

There's no Bram Stoker kind of vampires here, these are the original vrykolakoi, in all their unsophisticated, unglamorous horror. The birch forest in winter is a creepy, eerie backdrop to the story, which is not just about vampires, but about the relationship between a father and son, about having the courage to fulfil your destiny and finding redemption in action.

At one point Tomas says:
'Wait. A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.'

Like the old Eastern European tales there is an overarching moral message. It isn't a fast paced thriller with lots of action, it is more subtle than that. In this tale, using the device of a song, the message of accepting death so that you can live without fear is gently woven through the text, culminating in a final battle that brings all the book's themes to completion.

Due to the horror elements I would recommend this book for older readers. But then again, I read my family's collection of the Grimm Brothers' Tales when I was ten so what would I know!

Peter and his father Tomas arrive at a remote village plagued with mysterious deaths. At first Peter is confused when he father builds a moat around their small woodcutter's hut but soon Peter realizes that a vampire is hunting the woods searching for new victims. This novel opens with a gruesome attack on a woodcutter. These are not romantic "Twilight" vampires. Sedgwick uses the Eastern European legends of the nosferatu and vurkodlak: monsters who are considered diseases in human form. The novel is filled with strange superstitious rituals such as the Miorita where a young woman is forcibly married to unmarried man who has been killed and shut away in a hut outside the village. The relationship between Peter and his father is intense and Tomas is an alcoholic haunted by his past. Peter learns how his father's history as a warrior as marked his life and must make the decision whether to follow in his footsteps. Scary but very complex and moving as well. Marcus Sedgwick is a personal favourite who approaches horror and supernatural subjects with inteligence and peoples his works with unique characters and situations. The sequel "Kiss of Death" is equally frightening as well.

Are you sick of wannabe vampires who sparkle instead of self-combust in the sunlight and who mope around high-schools instead of stalking the terrified living in order to slake their never-ending thirst for blood? I know I am, which is why I thoroughly enjoyed Marcus Sedgewick's "My Swordhand is Singing," a vampire tale that does away with modern interpretations of lovelorn emo-vamps and instead draws upon the oldest known records of these creatures in order to shape its chilling story.

Set in Eastern Europe (most likely Transylvania, though this is never specified) in the early 17th century, Peter and his father Tomas have only recently settled on the outskirts of the village of Chust, lending their services as woodcutters, and are still treated as outsiders by the suspicious villagers. To be fair, the behaviour of Tomas is strange enough to warrant their attention. Not only a heavy drinker, Tomas has built his house on the fork of a river and dug a channel that connects the two adjourning streams so that he and his son live on a man-made island.
Peter is somewhat embarrassed by his father's behaviour, especially since he has his eye on a pretty village girl called Agnes, and neither does he understand why his father carries around a long wooden box that Peter is never allowed to open.

But stranger things are happening in the village of Chust. Livestock has gone missing, and there are reports of the recently dead visiting their loved ones at night. There is a spate of unusual deaths that have the community on a knife's edge, and the arrival of a band of gypsies does little to assuage the tension. Peter becomes increasingly aware that his own father knows more than he's letting on about the circumstances, and helped by a young gypsy girl, he pits himself against the supernatural threat that is running amuck in the surrounding forests.

"My Swordhand is Singing" is a vampire story with a difference - the difference being that it is so traditional. Heroes are armed with weapons and folklore. Vampires are bloated corpses which exist only to prey on the living. Both are trying to kill the other for the sake of basic survival. The action takes place in dark forests, snow-covered cemeteries and medieval villages, and Sedgewick draws on extensive research to enrich the creepy atmosphere with 17th century customs and beliefs, such as the burning of straw effigies dressed in the clothes of the departed to prevent their return, or the macabre practice of symbolically wedding a young girl to an unmarried corpse to ensure that he'll be probably mourned.

Expect no love story here; at least not between a human and a vampire. The key relationship lies between a father and son who are estranged despite their close living quarters, and the main character arc is Peter's gradual understanding of his father's reliance on drink and closed-mouth stoicism.

The prose is simple and sparse, but somehow remains incredibly evocative of the Eastern forests and chilly landscapes, and Sedgewick is a master of gradually ratcheting up the suspense page after page until its nail-biting conclusion. It is a reasonably slender volume with very short chapters (some only a page long) and a swift pace, so there's a good chance you could get it read in one sitting. Not everything works out accordingly: Sofia the gypsy girl seemed a little underdeveloped, and there is an oft-repeated song that doesn't really have the payoff or satisfactory explanation that it should.

But altogether, this is a refreshingly old-fashioned take on the widely-used vampire genre, and as such is a much stronger and more potent tale that successfully taps into our fear of night, death, and things that go bump in the night. Though completely self-contained, it was followed by a sequel, the more generically titled: The Kiss of Death

Long ago, vampires weren't romantic or alluring -- they were undead horrors that stalked nightmares rather than personal fantasies.

And Maurice Sedgwick gives vampire stories a bit more horror in "My Swordhand is Singing," a hauntingly atmospheric little novel full of snow, shadows and icy terror. While the first half is rather slow, Sedgwick makes up for that with heavy dollops of Transylvanian folklore, sword-swinging action, and plenty of chilling moments -- think of it as an antidote to all the drippy "Twilight"-style books.

Peter and his father Tomas live in a the rural village of Chust, where Peter makes ends meet by chopping wood and Tomas drowns his sorrows in slivovitz. But after burying a suicidal woodsman (who also had a HOLE through his chest), strange things begin to happen around the village. Though Tomas is scornful of their superstitions of tar and garlic, rumors began to fly of dead loved ones returning to visit the living -- and Peter's friend Agnes claims that the Shadow Queen has returned.

And when another man dies, Agnes is chosen for the Wedding of the Dead as the bride, and forced to stay in a secluded hut for several weeks. But when she vanishes, Peter learns of the undead creatures that are growing in number through the town -- and of his father's past as a soldier/vampire hunter, with a Turkish sword that can slay the vampires. But with the village turning against him and his gypsy ally Sofia, giving them only a little time to destroy the bloodthirsty undead... or be destroyed by them.

"My Swordhand is Singing" has the flavor of a classic horror story meant to frighten you out of your socks -- it has blood and snow, black wedding dresses, gypsies and ghastly white-faced undead who lash out against the living. What's more, Sedgwick steeps the entire story in traditional Eastern European lore and history -- the Nunta Mortului, King Michael of Wallachia, and an old Romanian ballad called the Miorita.

The biggest problem is that the first half is rather slow and not very horrific. But the second half definitely makes up for that -- Sedgwick packs it with bloody-mouthed vampires, foul-tempered hags, coffins scrawled with hateful rants, human sacrifices, and bloody battles with the undead. His prose shimmers with icy poetry as well ("Agnes's mourning dress wafted around her, making her look like a black ghost against the snow"), even during the nastiest moments.

His vampires are especially creepy -- they're bloody-mouthed, bloated corpses who seethe with rage and discontent, which they direct at the living. They're kind of zombiesque, except smarter and harder to kill.

Peter is a pretty likable hero -- he's genuinely brave, kind, and determined to save even the people who treat him like garbage merely for being a foreigner. Tomas is handled with more care, being a surly alcoholic who drowns his sorrows in local booze, but finally regains the courage and strength to fight the undead again. And while it initially seems that the shrill village girl Agnes is going to be a love interest for Peter, it's ultimately the sultry, quick-witted Sofia who fills the bill.

"My Swordhand is Singing" is a brief, bloody and beautiful vampire novel that restores some traditional ghastliness to the undead. And it leaves the way wide open for a sequel.

I thought this was an interesting take on the vampire legend. The beginning didn't have me too thrilled, slow and a little confusing. However, I kept reading and ended up liking the book. It wasn't the best vampire book I've ever read, but it was worth reading.